How MBA Programs Produce Leaders
In a thought-provoking article, “Why MBA Programs Don’t Produce Leaders”, Drew Hansen argues against the idea that you can learn leadership by studying for a Master of Business Administration (MBA). “Leaders are created in the crucible of life, not a classroom,” according to Hansen.
While Hansen’s position is well supported by his own analysis, I’m prepared to offer a more optimistic take. MBA programs produce leaders via three channels: reflection, knowledge building and experiential learning.
For each method to work, you need to choose a program that supports your personal leadership journey. Wait until you have real-world experience, then choose an MBA course that will drive your knowledge development and give you interesting experiences.
Key Takeaways
MBA programs produce leaders by reflection, knowledge building, and experiential learning.
- Reflection stimulates thought and helps you to understand workplace dynamics.
- Greater knowledge makes for better leadership.
- Experiential learning complements real-world experience in developing leadership qualities.
Actions: Delay doing an MBA until you have significant management experience. Choose a curriculum that deepens and extends your knowledge base. Favor programs that focus on applied learning.
Leadership Today
Leadership is exercised in data-rich, fast-moving environments shaped by automation and AI. Leaders are judged less on charisma and more on judgment, coordination, and decision-making under uncertainty.
Well-designed MBA programs develop these capabilities by combining reflection, broad business knowledge, and applied problem-solving.
When MBAs do shape leadership, it is often through specific design choices such as intensive group work with accountability, repeated presentations with critique, live client or consulting-style projects, negotiation and conflict exercises, and capstones that force trade-offs under time and information constraints. These elements create pressure to coordinate people, defend decisions, and adapt quickly, which is where leadership habits form or are exposed.
Nelson Mandela Learned Leadership by Thinking
Method 1 – Reflection. MBA programs can produce leaders by stimulating reflective thinking.
If leadership could only be learned through action, Nelson Mandela would be hard to explain. After 27 years imprisoned on Robben Island, he emerged to lead South Africa through the post-apartheid transition. His leadership qualities appeared to strengthen while confined, rather than diminish.
Mandela drew on prior life experience and sustained reflection to refine qualities such as discipline, humility, and focus. The lesson is not that isolation creates leaders, but that reflection deepens judgment.
MBA programs apply this principle deliberately. Through case analysis and guided discussion, participants are encouraged to reflect on experience and refine how they lead, without waiting for extraordinary circumstances.
A Stronger Knowledge Base Helps You Lead
Method 2 – Knowledge building. MBA programs can produce leaders by improving the depth and breadth of each student’s knowledge base.
Leadership training is an increasingly small part of the MBA experience. General leadership theory is being crowded out by other subjects as students opt for specialized programs, with concentrations such as international business and health management.
The availability of credible distance learning MBAs also allows each student to choose the program, however far away, that best matches their interests and career goals. As a result, the traditional MBA program, with a strong emphasis on leadership principles, is being chosen less.
If leadership itself is being taught less, how can MBA programs keep producing leaders? A key part of the answer may lie in Robert Sutton’s observation that “big-picture only” bosses are “the worst”.
Sutton rather convincingly makes the claim that deep and detailed knowledge of your field makes you a better leader: “The best [new managers] are obsessed with learning details about every aspect of the business; the worst – the least promising and most arrogant – treat such nuances as being somehow beneath them.”
While you can’t normally expect to gain highly job-specific knowledge through a course, an MBA program can bring you up to speed – at least for management and leadership purposes – on diverse topics and disciplines. For example, you might learn enough from your units on marketing and data analytics to better manage your next multi-disciplinary project.
Another way to think about this is that leadership and strategy are often talked about as “joining the dots”. But you can’t join the dots if you’re fuzzy on where the dots are. Understanding management theory back to front is only useful if you also have good knowledge of the different aspects of business operations.
You Gain Experience While Doing an MBA
Method 3 – Experiential learning. MBA programs can produce leaders by offering rich applied-learning experiences.
A good MBA program is rich enough to offer more than academic instruction. Students are also able to experience things that impact on them and which they can look back upon, and draw from, in the future. Experiential education refers to learning that actively involves the student and which has feedback and reflection components.
For example, an instructor could ask a student to create a strategy to achieve a given objective. The student might pitch their approach to a group of fellow students, who give feedback on strengths and weaknesses. Then the student may be asked to refine or change their strategy based on the feedback.
Experiential education has a better chance of developing a person in a practical sense, beyond what passive reading of theories and facts can offer. The richness of the learning process, with phases such as planning, execution and adaptation, can be immersive, challenging and emotive.
Such applied learning in an MBA program complements real-world experience in developing leadership qualities. The learning exercises can be quick-fire, diverse and challenging. Students may develop certain competencies faster or better than possible in the workplace alone.
How to Become a Leader by Doing an MBA
Having identified ways that MBA programs can teach leadership and produce leaders, some strategies fall out for how you can become a leader by doing an MBA.
To optimize the benefits of reflection, you should delay doing an MBA until you have plenty of business management experience. You can gain this experience in being managed but it’s also worthwhile to have supervisory and leadership experience. That way, during your studies, you can think deeply about how to refine your style to better handle different situations.
To optimize knowledge building, choose an MBA program with a curriculum that aligns well with your goals for deepening and extending your knowledge base. Popular careers for MBA graduates include business consultant, business development manager, general manager and program manager. Ask yourself, “Does this program offer knowledge that will help in my preferred career stream?”
Finally, try to find an MBA program that offers experiential learning and not just the traditional lectures and exams. You’ll develop more, have more fun, and become a better leader by doing an MBA program that challenges and excites.
Related: 7 Keys to Effective Communication at Work, with Examples
The skills and knowledge you may get from an MBA don’t always translate to success in the real world. I’d hope you’d be after more than just leadership development to make an MBA worthwhile. Mentors, coaching, and real work experience may be equally or more valuable for developing leadership skills. But I still like the general advice here about what kind of program to go for.
This article shows that there are different ways to learn. I laugh when I hear people say they’d rather have new employees learn from on-the-job training then book learning. In my experience, there are benefits to both, but they are not mutually exclusive. Today, many programs (such as MBA programs) have lessons and exercises where people do in fact learn leadership. I wonder what Drew Hansen would say about that mantra, “Leaders are born, not made”?
I am preparing for college and have been considering MBA programs. I want to have enough knowledge under my belt to ensure I get a good job. The market is going to be tight by the time I finish and I am aware of that now so I really don’t want to mess this up. I know plenty of people in debt from schooling and not able to find work. I don’t want that to be me. Knowing getting an MBA can help outside and beyond work is telling me it is more than worth pursuing.
I think students are much more focused on doing an MBA that they really need now or in the near future. If we go back 10 or more years, some students didn’t choose the best MBA for them.
While traditional learning can be good, today’s world requires much more. Experiential learning is a must because it puts theory to the test and helps students become leaders by doing not by just learning. The exercises will help the student deal with stressful situations and reflect on what was done well and what could have been done better after the stress has passed.
It’s clear that a good MBA adds certain value to a student’s education. It also depends on how the student uses this knowledge. The faster they put it to use the better. Knowledge without action is nothing. The best way to learn is to do that’s why it’s a good idea to be working in your field while you are undertaking your MBA. This way you learn the theory and put it into practice as you go. You’ll learn much faster and retain much more this way. I agree that experiential learning is an important part of an MBA and students should search for an MBA that has this.